What, Asia?!

Ni hao!

Alright, so this isn't quite the right place for a blog about China, but I didn't know where else to put it. And I got enough requests for pictures that I couldn't ignore them, so here we go!

For those of you who might be confused as to why I was in China in the first place, allow me to explain. My older brother has been in China teaching English for about six months now and my mom and dad wanted to visit him during their vacation time. I had only just recovered from my Euro-trip jet-lag when my mom announced (mere days before we were to leave) that we were going to China on May 23rd. I would've been quite content relaxing at home, but I had no choice in the matter, my ticket had already been booked. So I packed and readied myself to spend 8 whole days (that's 192 hours!) with my family. One 15-hour plane ride and a massive headache later, we were in China: (as always, click to enlarge)

I have used my elite photoshop skillZ to highlight (in green) the three cities we visited and to point out the direction towards Thailand. Given a choice, I would've elected to go there instead. My heart yearns for Thailand, no kidding.

So we arrived in Guangzhou (southern China) where my brother's school, Hua Mei International, was located. As you can see by my brother's face in the following picture at the airport, he was as pleased with this trip as I was:

We spent a few days in my brother's apartment, meeting his friends (fellow international teachers) and getting bitten by mosquitoes in the sweltering heat. I know, I know, Thailand has those problems as well, but at least I can speak the language there! And my extended family's there.. OK, no more whining about wanting to be in Thailand. ... for now.

Not being able to communicate was really a pain in the be-hind, though! Much more of a problem than it was when I was traveling Europe, perhaps because I was with my parentals, or some other reason, I don't know. My brother, who has taken a fair number of Chinese classes, had to chaperone us, and it was strange.

Anyway, on to more pictures! Here's one I took at a restaurant by a reservoir. (Btw, I am SO done with Chinese food for a long while.)

This one is rather amusing, and ironic. It's from the Oral English Competition at the school that my brother MC'ed. (Look closely to spot the error.)

After a few days at my brother's place, we took a train to Shenzhen to visit a distant relative (my second or third cousin?), Bryan. Shenzhen is a relatively young city near Hong Kong that is very industrialized:

I can't neglect to put food in this post! Look at all the chili on this fish!:

The next morning we spent all day at a "cultural amusement park" called Splendid China. It was painfully boring, and involved way too much walking to see essentially nothing. I tried to derive amusement from this sign in front of the park:

My mom and dad had some fun...

and I did a little bit, too, with the miniatures that covered half the park:

.. then, in a non sequitur, we saw the Great Wall of China!

.. psych! This is just a convincing miniature.
The real one is in Beijing, in northeastern China, and we didn't get to see it. :(

Oh look, a rare family picture! Don't be fooled by my bro's smile -- he was pretty miserable, haha.

At least we got to see a pretty neat horse show:

and a really crazy show at night called "Dragon Meets Phoenix"

The Chinese really know how to put on a show! So much was going on that I didn't know where to focus my attention!

Anyway, the next day, my lucky brother returned to Guangzhou because he had classes to teach, and my parents, Bryan and his kid, Nico, and I journeyed on. We took a plane to Guilin and stayed there for about four days (I think?).

This is a hole-in-the-wall noodle place across the street from the hotel we stayed at, where we ate large bowls of noodle soup for 2 yuen (roughly the equivalent of 25 cents!)

Guilin is very different from Shenzhen, and many rivers crisscross the county. It was beautiful at night:

We did more tourist-y stuff in Guilin, like visit the "Princes City Solitary Beauty Peak" (yes, that is the correct name, I swear!)

That's Bryan on the far right with Nico. Ahh, I should mention that Nico, a 6-year-old hyperactive, unruly pain-in-the-@$$, made the trip ... interesting.

There were signs all over the "city" with the following symbol on them that said "please keep off the grass," but for some reason, one sign decided to convey a much more philosophical message:

.. yea, I don't know.

In "Princes City" we saw short shows and I took a mock test to become a government official:

..I can't speak Chinese, let alone read it, so I didn't pass. Woe is me.

At the end of our tour of the "city" (our poor tour guide had to contend with talkative Nico for two hours..), we climbed "solitary beauty peak":

it looks innocuous enough, but don't be fooled! It was a long, hard climb in the crazy hot and humid weather (fun!)

this is the view we climbed to see. Nice, but not exactly worth it, in my (lazy-ass) opinion. To top it all off (hah. get it? top it .. oh nevermind.), there was a photographer at the top of the peak who rented out costumes for tourists to take pictures in. And, yes, you guessed it, my mom insisted that she and I do it.

I hope you are ready to have a good laugh at my expense.

note the major eye-rolling on my part.

.. but when mommy's happy, everybody is happy, haha.


more food, yay! chicken served looking like a chicken. .. sort of disturbing, actually.

Uhh, where'd we go next? Oh yes, the Reed Flute Cave which was beautiful, but only because of the multicolored fluorescent lights placed there by tourist-luring-money-makers.

They named the rock formations throughout the cave ludicrous names like "old man guarding treasure." Granted, if you squinted and turned your head, some of the formations actually looked like what they had been named, but only on rare occasions.

This one is "Lion seeing off guests":

The day after seeing the caves, we went on a 4.5-hour cruise of the Lijiang (Li River) which was pretty relaxing. The views were beautiful on deck, but I got majorly sunburned.

oh, and it was really, really windy.

After the first hour or so it got boring, but luckily there were interesting people on deck to watch. The following two acted like Hong Kong movie stars:

Yes, her shirt says "I am in my prime!"
... "wow" is all I have to say.

and this girl posed while eating a cucumber. very, very random.

We reached our destination, Yangshuo, and visited some random sites:

a temple

a thousand-year-old tree (that huge thing behind us is all part of ONE tree.)

This is the trunk of the thousand-year-old tree. The other trunks are trees grown to help support the massive amounts of foliage.

Inside the Dragon Cave... which would've been boring except for a small adventure. Halfway into the cave, after we had just boarded a small boat, the electricity went out, and we were stuck in near-pitch-dark in the water for about twenty minutes. People were sort of panicking, but it was alright in the end, except that we were late getting back to our tour bus and some people were grumpy. Sorry, not a very exciting adventure. :P

The day after our tour of Yangshuo, we returned (without a tour group) to go bamboo rafting, which was by far the most enjoyable thing we did in China, for me, anyway.

my mom climbed behind the seats and tried her hand at rowing, so..

I tried, too. It was surprisingly hard, so after this picture, I left the rest of the rowing up to our dude in the hat, haha.

Nico, smart little tyke, stripped and got into the cool water.

The scenery was beautiful and the ride was very relaxing. I just chillax'ed at the front of the raft with my legs in the water.

We returned to Guangzhou for the last two days of our stay in China and didn't do much because my brother got sick as soon as we arrived in his apartment. Seriously, he says that as soon as my mom stepped in the door, he started feeling feverish (haha. I think it's psychological..)

We did get to do a bit of shopping, which was unfruitful for awhile since none of us knew how to bargain (again, we couldn't speak the language!) But then my mom met three students from a college nearby the flea market who were English majors. Their names were (and I kid you not) Seven, Eleven, and Linda. They latched on to us and offered to take us around the market and help us shop. It was weird, they were so excited to talk to Americans. They were very nice though, and I scored some loot ($10 jeans!) so I'd say it was an opportune meeting.

From left to right: Seven, Linda, Eleven, me, my dad.

Seven and Eleven weren't the best names I heard while in China though. One of my brother's 6th grade students named Lauren changed her name to Monkey. Aah, so great.

So that's all for my China trip. It kills me that we were SO close to Thailand, but didn't go. Aaah, anybody want to give me $1000 for a plane ticket to Thailand? I'd love you forever. And bake you cookies. Pleeeease? ;P

Anyway, it's off to bed for me. I'm STILL jet-lagged, so I hope I don't wake up at 7 pm tomorrow...

Leave me some comments because I am a comment-whore. :D